James Thomas Flexner papers
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Abstract
Drafts, galleys, scrapbooks, typescripts, index cards, research notes, subject files, and correspondence of James Thomas Flexner (1908-2003), the prolific author of twenty-six works on American art, history, and biography. Flexner was perhaps best known for his three-volume History of American Painting (1947-1962), and his four-volume George Washington: A Biography (1965-1972), the final installment of which won the 1973 National Book Award for Biography.
Biographical Note
James Thomas Flexner was born in Manhattan on January 13, 1908 to Simon and Helen (Thomas) Flexner. Simon Flexner (1863–1946), a physician, scientist, and professor of experimental pathology at the University of Pennsylvania, served as first director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Helen (Thomas) Flexner (1871–1956), a professor of English at Bryn Mawr College (where her sister served as president), was connected by family marriages to the philosopher Bertrand Russell and the art critic Bernard Berenson.
As a child James Thomas Flexner found reading and writing difficult. He overcame his dyslexia one day as he sat in Central Park staring at a page of Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit, when the printed marks suddenly formed themselves into words. This achievement so inspired Flexner that from then on writing his own stories became the focus of his life. Educated at the progressive Lincoln School of Columbia University's Teachers College, he went on to graduate magna cum laude with a degree in English from Harvard University in 1929. Soon after he was hired to write human interest pieces for the New York Herald Tribune, but left by 1931 for a position with the New York City Department of Health. He resigned the following year to devote his full time to writing.
His first book, Doctors on Horseback: Pioneers of American Medicine (1937), was inspired by the work of his father. (Simon Flexner is probably best known for developing a serum treatment for spinal meningitis.) From medicine he gravitated to art history, with America's Old Masters: First Artists of the New World (1939), a study of the painters Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, and Gilbert Stuart. This work, and Flexner's three-volume History of American Painting (1947–1962), helped establish the subject as an academic specialty, despite the author's lack of formal training in the field.
American history and biography, too, supplied compelling material for Flexner's talents. 1953 saw publication of The Traitor and the Spy: Benedict Arnold and John André. This was followed in 1959 by Mohawk Baronet: Sir William Johnson of New York. But George Washington would prove Flexner's most enduring and rewarding subject.
The four-volume George Washington: A Biography, appeared between 1965 and 1972. Critics hailed Flexner's portrait for demystifying Washington, for moving beyond "the marble image" and bringing the hero "down from Olympus." The final volume, Anguish and Farewell, 1793–1799, won the 1973 National Book Award for Biography and a special Pulitzer citation. In 1974 Flexner published a single volume abridgment of the series, Washington: The Indispensable Man. Flexner's Washington works were adapted as television miniseries in the mid-1980s starring Barry Bostwick as the first president.
Flexner's later biographies, The Young Hamilton (1978) and States Dyckman: American Loyalist (1980) were followed by volumes of a personal nature: An American Saga: The Story of Helen Thomas and Simon Flexner (1984) and Maverick's Progress (1996), an autobiography.
James Flexner married professional singer Beatrice Hudson (1919–1998) in 1950. The couple had one daughter, Helen. Flexner died, age 95, in Manhattan, on February 13, 2003.
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This note is based on Flexner's obituary in the New York Times, February 16, 2003 ("James Thomas Flexner, Washington Biographer, 95 Dies"), his entry in the Dictionary of Art Historians, and information from his autobiography, Maverick's Progress (1996).
Arrangement
The James Thomas Flexner Papers are sorted in twenty series. Series I through XVIII contain the research notes pertaining to one or more of Flexner's published books. Series XIX and XX contain drafts of unpublished novels, miscellaneous correspondence, and subject files. Since much of the material within each series is undated, the collection is sorted chronologically by publication date. File titles are derived from those in a 2003 inventory of the collection; these were transcribed, apparently, from Flexner's original container labels.
- Series I
- Doctors on Horseback: Pioneers of American Medicine, published 1937
- Series II
- America's Old Masters: First Artists of the New World, published 1939
- Series III
- William Henry Welch and the Heroic Age of American Medicine, published 1941
- Series IV
- Steamboats Come True: American Inventors in Action, published 1944
- Series V
- History of American Painting, 3 volumes, published 1947-1962
- Series VI
- A Short History of American Painting, published 1950, reissued 1957
- Series VII
- The Traitor and the Spy: Benedict Arnold and John André, published 1953
- Series VIII
- Gilbert Stuart: A Great Life in Brief, published 1955
- Series IX
- Mohawk Baronet: Sir William Johnson of New York, published 1959
- Series X
- George Washington: A Biography, 4 volumes plus abridgment, published 1965-1972, 1974
- Series XI
- The World of Winslow Homer 1836–1910, published 1966
- Series XII
- Nineteenth Century American Painting, published 1970
- Series XIII
- The Face of Liberty: Founders of the United States, published 1975
- Series XIV
- The Young Hamilton: A Biography, published 1978
- Series XV
- States Dyckman: American Loyalist, published 1980
- Series XVI
- An American Saga: The Story of Helen Thomas and Simon Flexner, published 1984
- Series XVII
- Poems of the Twenties, published 1991
- Series XVIII
- Maverick's Progress: An Autobiography, published 1996
- Series XIX
- Unpublished novels, undated
- Series XX
- Miscellaneous correspondence and subject files, circa 1933-1971
Scope and Contents
The James Thomas Flexner Papers include the raw materials—drafts, galleys, scrapbooks, typescripts, index cards, research notes, subject files, and correspondence—that the author used to create most of his twenty-six books on art history and American history and biography. Not every format exists for each book project. Because the collection has not been processed below the box level (it was inventoried in 2003 and rehoused but not reordered in 2019), it is difficult to know the extent of topic coverage or the date range of items. The container list below attempts to minimize the haphazard placement of related material by grouping it under its common project title. Interested researchers should consult each box listed under a particular series, except for Series XX, which contains miscellaneous correspondence and subject files that are scattered throughout most of the collection's 58 boxes.
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Access Restrictions
Open to qualified researchers.
Use Restrictions
This collection is owned by the New-York Historical Society. The copyright law of the United States governs the making of photocopies and protects unpublished materials as well as published materials. Unpublished materials created before January 1, 1978 cannot be quoted in publication without permission of the copyright holder. Photocopying undertaken by staff only. Limited to 20 exposures of stable, unbound material per day.
Preferred Citation
The collection should be cited as the "James Thomas Flexner Papers, MS 220, The New-York Historical Society."
Location of Materials
Immediate Source of Acquisition
James Thomas Flexner gave the bulk of the collection to the New-York Historical Society on October 11, 1974. (In the acknowledgements to his 1996 autobiography, Maverick's Progress, Flexner thanks the Society for its more than sixty years of hospitality. During that time he was accorded research and writing space in the library.) Donations of material continued through the 1990s and possibly as late as 2003, the year of Flexner's death.
About this Guide
Processing Information
A member of the New-York Historical Society's library staff inventoried the James Thomas Flexner Papers in 2003 (the year of Flexner's death). In 2019, to prepare the collection for shipment to offsite storage, stacks project archivist Elise Winks rehoused it in record cartons and revised the 2003 inventory to include newly-assigned box numbers. Processing archivist Joseph Ditta based the present finding aid (2019) on Winks' updated inventory. The materials in the collection have not been sorted or thoroughly examined, hence the scattered filing of related items and the vagueness of dates.